Brad Pitt vs. Irish: on national identity, experience

"It's not an American story. It's an Irish one," Brad Pitt, the fatally wounded Irish terrorist, sagely whispers to American cop Harrison Ford in the 1997 film The Devil's Own. Whether Ford's bullet or Pitt's own bad accent kills the character remains disputed, but one thing is certain: the Ireland of Hollywood cannot live up to the Ireland of its own indigenous films.

ROBERT LISAK/YH A scene from the first production of 'Dolly West's Kitche' (and the last production of 'Dolly West's Kitche' behind bleachers)..

This weekend, in an attempt to find the "real Ireland," the Whitney Humanities Center will host a symposium entitled, "The Theater of Irish Cinema." Focusing on what Film Studies Co-Chair Dudley Andrew calls "the diversity and range of the aesthetic and social interactions among stage, screen, and politics," the symposium will address questions of "Irish performativity, the transformation of Irish tradition, and the shifting contours of Irishness itself in the global perspective, produced by the successful export of national cultural products such as films, pop music, and Riverdance."

When the symposium was proposed in the spring of 2000, Andrew sought ways to expand its parameters beyond the narrow genre of film. Yale's Theater Studies department seemed a natural ally. The department gladly agreed to contribute, and responsibility for its contribution quickly fell to Murray Biggs, a Theater Studies professor with a love for Irish literature. Biggs was scheduled to teach a class the following fall called "The Actor and the Text," a seminar which focuses on the historical, cultural, and theatrical contexts of a play, before staging a small-scale production of it at the end of the semester. In need of a text, the upcoming Irish cinema symposium made Biggs's choice simple: Dolly West's Kitchen, a new play by renowned Irish playwright Frank McGuinness, would be the focus of the course.

I met with Biggs just before the opening performance of the play Wednesday evening. A classic British dramaturg in a dark teal blazer, Biggs was eager to talk about his production. Smiling, he confided that he has never felt more relaxed at the opening night of a production, because he is so comfortable with this play and his actors.

"As far as we know, [Dolly West's Kitchen] has not been done anywhere in the United States yet," Biggs boasts, excited to be directing the American premiere of McGuinness's latest play here in the unassuming Berkeley multi-purpose room. The play debuted at the Abbey Theater in Dublin in October 1999 before opening briefly in London the following year.

The students mill about us as we talk, setting props, their hair in curlers, muttering to themselves in their well-acquired accents. Theirs is clearly a team project. Save a professional costume designer and a graduate student properties master, there is no crew. The students run the show backstage as well as on stage. Eight of the nine are theater studies majors and most had worked together before they enrolled in The Actor and The Text.

Although it's a domestic play, the wartime setting of Dolly West's Kitchen makes political ramifications unavoidable. The action centers on the West family, living at the northernmost edge of Ireland, just 11 miles from Derry, a town in British Northern Ireland where the British and American forces are preparing for the Normandy Invasion. While Ireland is technically neutral, the play's characters are anything but, and nationalism and duty soon become central themes. In their research for the production, the students explored these themes in detail, just as "The Theater of Irish Cinema" symposium hopes to do through its featured films and speakers.

Andrew recalls visiting Ireland when the 1996 film Michael Collins was released and "interrupted normal life while everyone lined up, kids included, to watch and debate Neil Jordan's version of the birth of the republic." Clearly, there is a great debate among scholars and natives as to whether modern Irish films really are "authentically Irish," given that they are often directed and produced by British and American filmmakers. Sensitive to this debate and concerned with the authenticity of their production, the American students of Biggs's class carefully researched the culture and history of the nation and perfected their accents under the guidance of Irishman Emmet Stokes, BR '02.

Still, the symposium will focus not on Irish stories told by Americans, as films like The Devil's Own so embarrassingly do, but on Irish stories told by Irishmen. Twenty-some scholars, writers, directors, and actors—Neil Jordan, actor Stephen Rea, and Irish intellectual Seamus Deane chief among them—will discuss the nature of Irish cinema and its predecessor, the Irish national theater, throughout the weekend.

As I left Wednesday's performance of Dolly West's Kitchen, I overheard a fellow audience member announce his approval. "Well, that was terrific," he told his companion. "I hope the rest of the series is this good." It is an almost ridiculous wish, given the caliber of the creative minds that the Whitney Humanities Center has gathered for the occasion. They are almost certain to tell a real "Irish story" deeply infused with national politics and steeped in a rich oral tradition—a far cry from Brad Pitt's disjointed "American one."

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